C U R R E N T    S H O W

HERB BROWN
Painting & Video Works from the 1960s
January 28 – April 1, 2010

Herbert L. Brown was born in 1923 in Lynn, MA. By 1941, he was a young student at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. A year later, 1942, he transferred his studies to the University of Illinois, concentrating on a background in engineering. During the years 1943-1946, Brown enlisted in the U.S. Army. Returning to his educational pursuits by 1947, he began studying art at the Boston Museum of Art School. From 1949-1952, he studied at the Brooklyn Museum School of Fine Arts, with Max Beckmann. During this time he emerged on the New York art scene with exhibitions beginning at the Cooper Union Gallery. By 1960, he began working with the March Group (NO!artists). In 1961, the series Posters Overpainted was introduced using advertising pages and subway posters as the background for his paintings. The content of these paintings was met with censorship within mainstream society affecting the art world in the 1960s. In 1963, he began the series Television Screens Repainted. During 1966, in horror, he watched along with painters Alfred Leslie and Adolph Gottlieb, as their studio, with 900 of Brown's works alone, were destroyed by one of the worst fires in New York City's history.

This past year Brown took part in BLT Gallery's Wiser Than God group show. Of the Wiser Than God artists, all 82 years of age and older, still living and working, Brown was nicknamed the "bad boy of the show." In 2009, Brown received a grant from the State of New York, after the New York Experimental Video Center deemed his Oil & TV video painting series seminal works.

Brown currently resides in New York, NY.

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